by Herren, Greg
He nodded. “Robby was always mean to me.” He wiped at his face. “Always. He called Heather a whore when I called him to see if they’d come to the wedding. And the last time I talked to him—” His voice broke. “He told me I wasn’t Dad’s.” He looked at me, pain written all over his face. “That Mom had cheated on Dad, that I wasn’t really his full brother. Why would he say something like that to me?”
Whatever I’d been expecting to hear, it wasn’t that. I stared at him. “Did he say who your father really was?”
Jonny shook his head. “When I asked him, he just laughed and told me to ask Mom.”
“Did you ask her?”
“I called her, but just her voicemail. So I left a message.” He gnawed his lip.
“When was this?”
He chewed his lower lip, and wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Thursday afternoon. He came by and wanted me to talk to Mom, get her to let him borrow some money from my trust fund. I said no, and he went off on me.” He wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I punched him and threw him out.” His voice cracked. “The last time I saw my brother I punched him.”
I wanted to shake him, but resisted the urge. “Did you say anything about it in the voicemail?”
He nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it. But I didn’t ever want to talk about that. Ever. To anyone.” He looked at me. “You don’t think that’s why Mom ran away, do you?”
“It just might be,” I said and slammed the door behind me.
Chapter Twelve
“That must have been annoying,” Paige said, taking a drink from her bottle of Abita Amber and sighing in delight. I’d just finished ranting about Jonny—a rant that started the moment I opened my front door to let her in.
“That’s putting it mildly,” I replied as I unwrapped my shrimp po’boy. I popped an errant shrimp into my mouth.
The last thing I’d seen as I’d stormed my way out of the dumpy little shotgun house was Heather, standing in the hallway with a self-satisfied smirk on her face. I told you so.
I’d been more than a little furious with Jonny—it was pretty much all I could do not to strangle him. My phone had begun ringing the very moment I got in my car—it was Jonny. He left a long, rambling, apologetic voicemail, which just made my blood boil even hotter as I listened to it. He kept apologizing over and over for not telling me about the argument with Robby, insisting that he hadn’t thought it was all that important, and no, he wasn’t keeping anything else from me, he swore, please don’t stop looking for his mom.
I deleted it without bothering to answer.
Paige made a face. “Well, he’s what? Twenty? It’s possible he really didn’t think it mattered. Remember what we were like at that age? It’s embarrassing to remember some of the stupid shit we used to do—and besides, cut him a little slack, his mom’s missing and his brother’s been murdered.” Paige took another long drink of her beer and belched rather loudly.
“Always the lady,” I commented as I took a bite of my sandwich and sighed with satisfaction. Paige had called me just as I was pulling into my parking space, still shaking with anger. She’d invited herself over and offered to bring food. I hadn’t realized until she mentioned it how hungry I was, so I agreed and hung up before running through the rain to my back door. When I got inside, toweled off, and changed into dry clothes, I’d called Abby and filled her in.
“You think this changes anything?” Abby had asked.
“We need to find out—see what you can find out about Mona’s distant past.” I hung up and tossed the phone on my bed. I stalked into my office area, turned on the computer, and updated my file on the case as my mind tossed around any number of possibilities while I calmed down.
But I couldn’t help coming back to the possibility that now Mona herself had an even stronger motive for killing her son and disappearing.
Maybe the blood in her car was Robby’s.
“This is nice,” Paige went on, dragging a steak fry through a puddle of ketchup. “It’s been a while.” She sighed as she chewed the fry. “And that’s my bad, I’m sorry. This job—” She shook her head. “Had I known how time-consuming it would be running a magazine, I would have stayed with the paper. But then, I’d probably no longer be with the paper, given the buy-outs and so forth. At least there’s money behind Crescent City, and I don’t have to worry about job security there. For a few more years, any way—until the Internet finishes killing the print industry.”
Paige and I had been close friends ever since I was a freshman in college. We’d met during little sister rush at my fraternity, Beta Kappa. I’d gone back to my room to get away from the drunken debauchery and found her sitting on my bed, smoking a joint. We’d hit it off from the first—it turned out she was doing an undercover report on little sister rush for the student paper, but she kind of liked Beta Kappa and took a bid, ditching the story. She was the first person I’d come out to and had been my beard all the way through college. We’d both moved to New Orleans after graduating—me going to work for the NOPD and she getting a job with the Times-Picayune. She’d witnessed a convenience store shooting, written a powerful editorial about it that got her nominated for a Pulitzer prize, and her career had taken off from there.
She’d always wanted to be a novelist and for years had been working on a historical romance called The Belle of New Orleans. After Katrina, she put it aside and wrote a memoir about her experiences in the city after the levee failure. She’d offered to let me read it, but I declined—that first year afterward had been rough enough to experience firsthand, let alone relive through someone else’s words. A major New York agent had taken it on, but no publisher had wanted it. She’d sworn she was going to finish Belle, but she never talked about it anymore. I assumed that between her job and the guy she was seeing—Blaine’s older brother Ryan—she didn’t have the time to work on it anymore.
“Do you ever miss being a reporter?” I took another bite of the po’boy. I was curious—when she’d been working the crime beat for the paper she’d always bitched about what she saw every day, and every night she’d come home to drown herself in wine and smoke pot.
“We-ell.” She munched while she thought for a moment. “Yeah, I do sometimes. I miss having my finger on the city’s pulse the way I used to—I mean, I still kind of do, but the magazine is more about the arts, politics, and culture—I don’t really know what’s going on with the working class and the poor the way I used to, you know? I know, I used to always feel like I’d never get clean when I got home every night, and I remember having to drink a lot of wine and smoke a lot of pot to anaesthetize myself, and I don’t miss that. And I don’t miss having a city editor breathing down my neck, telling me what I can and can’t write, blah blah blah, telling me I dressed like a gypsy and making fun of me all the time.” She’d had a great relationship with her original city editor, but then he retired. She always called his replacement “that bitch Coralie.” Coralie didn’t appreciate Paige’s unique style of dressing. Right now she was wearing a flowing black silk skirt and a red peasant blouse with full sleeves. She went on, “I do like having some control over what we put in the magazine—and Rachel is so great to work with.” In one of those “New Orleans is a small town” twists, the magazine’s publisher was Rory’s older sister. “Would I like us to focus on some of the social issues in the city, the poverty, the quality of public education? Sure I would. But compared to all the other headaches that came with working at the paper? Nah, I don’t miss any of that shit at all.” She beamed at me. “But I do miss having the time to hang out like I used to.” She ran a hand through her mop of red curls. “And I miss helping you with your cases—that was always a lot of fun.”
I laughed. “You used to always act like it was a huge ordeal.”
“Yeah, well.” She winked at me. “Didn’t want you to take me for granted.”
“I miss having someone who can dig through the archives of the paper for me.”
“Meh.” She shr
ugged. “Jeph can hack into just about anything, can’t he?” Paige was the one who’d found Jephtha for me. She’d done a story on him—he’d been sent to juvie when he was caught committing credit card fraud online—he’d also hacked into his school’s computer system and changed grades for cash. He was what she considered a classic example of the failure of the New Orleans public school system—this incredibly bright kid with an almost supernatural talent for computer work who’d fallen through the cracks and wound up breaking the law. And of course, with his background, he couldn’t get a decent job as an adult. He was washing dishes in an Uptown restaurant when she profiled him for the paper, and in his free time he was designing computer games, trying to make it big. I’d given him a test assignment—and he’s worked for me ever since. He was still working on developing the games, but he didn’t have to wash dishes in a hellishly hot kitchen anymore.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I winked. I preferred not to know how Jeph and Abby got the information I asked them for. “I’m sure Jeph would never risk doing anything that would put him behind bars again.” I finished my po’boy and crumpled up the butcher paper as I chewed. I tossed it into the garbage can next to my desk and washed the last bite down with another swig of Abita. I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I was full, and it felt great.
Paige carefully wrapped up the second half of her sandwich and placed it in her enormous Louis Vuitton knock-off purse. “Which brings me to why I’m here,” she said carefully, not meeting my eyes.
“And here I thought you missed me.” I faked an injured tone. “I’m wounded. You mean you only come see me when you want something from me?”
“Fuck you.” She gave me a look that could sterilize a lizard. “Last time I checked, the phone works two ways, asshole. You haven’t exactly been ringing my phone off the hook since you started seeing Rory.” She sniffed. “You get a cute boy in your bed on a regular basis and your friends cease to exist. I see how you are.”
“Just yanking your chain.” I laughed. “It is good to see you, you know. And what can I do for you?”
“Yeah, well, I do feel bad about it, but the damned magazine takes up so much time, and then Ryan on top of that…” She conceded with a nod, leaning back on the couch and putting her sandal-clad feet up on my coffee table. “But we’re working on a story about the Luke Marino lawsuit, and oddly enough, your name came up when I was meeting with Martin—the reporter I’ve got chasing the story.” She smiled at me. “And I figured you’d be much more likely to talk to me than to some reporter you don’t know.”
I frowned, shaking my head. “I really don’t know a lot about the suit itself, Paige. You’d have to talk to Luke, or Loren McKeithen—he’s not the lead attorney on the case, but he does love to see his name in print.”
“Loren was the one who gave my reporter your name,” Paige replied. “As soon as Martin filled me in, I told him to let me handle talking to you. He wasn’t too happy about it.” She grinned. “Like I’m going to horn in on his story. I’ve never once stolen a story in all my years in journalism.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Paige.” I crossed my arms. “You know damned well all you had to do was call and ask me to talk to this Martin guy, and I would have. So?”
“We-ell, okay, the thought of leaving the office early was kind of appealing, and I haven’t seen you in weeks, and it’s been years since we’ve sat around brainstorming about one of your cases,” she admitted, pulling a joint out of her purse. “And Ryan got some killer stuff last week.” She passed it to me. “Take a whiff.”
I held it to my nose and inhaled, and whistled. It was good pot, very strong and green smelling. And we did used to get stoned and talk about my cases—several times, it had helped break the case.
I passed it back to her with a frown, looking over at the clock on my desk. “I don’t know if I should get stoned,” I said slowly. “There’s a lot of work I can still do on the case today—” I broke off and thought about it for a moment. Rory was doing bar testing that night and wasn’t coming by because he wouldn’t be off work until after eleven.
A night off wouldn’t kill me—and was there anything I could do tonight that would make a difference? No, there wasn’t—and Abby was still on the case.
I lit the joint and inhaled, passing it back to her.
“What do you want to know about Luke Marino?” I asked after blowing the smoke out in a massive plume toward the ceiling fan. “I can’t say much about the suit because I really only know the bare bones—why he’s suing and what it’s about.”
“Why do you think Mona O’Neill decided to change her testimony?”
“Therein lies the rub.” I grinned. My mind was getting softer around the edges, and I could feel my muscles relaxing. It was very good pot. “Maybe Mona’s testimony was a lie to begin with.”
“Oh?” Her eyebrows went up.
I explained what Abby and I had been theorizing at Slice. “I mean, you remember what it was like those last few days before Katrina came ashore, right? The panic and terror? Do you believe she would have sent her teenage son off with her daughter and driven across the bridge to keep an eye on Cypress Gardens—when the owners left town?” I shook my head. “That story always bothered me.”
“And after all these years, she gets a guilty conscience because her church is closing?” Paige rolled her eyes. “But you said Jonny confirmed that he left town with Lorelle and her family.”
“That doesn’t mean Mona didn’t leave herself. Maybe she sent Jonny off with Lorelle, drove over to check out the place, and left herself later.”
“And Luke got her to go along with a plan to scam the insurance?”
“The only person who can really answer that is Mona, and I don’t think anyone’s ever going to be able to ask her again.”
“You’re pretty sure she’s dead.” Paige passed the joint back to me. I took another hit and handed it back. She stared at it. “What if you’re wrong?” She put it to her lips and inhaled. “What if she’s in hiding somewhere?”
I shook my head. Even though I was getting stoned, I wasn’t about to tell Paige the theory that Mona might have killed Robby and gone into hiding. I didn’t have any proof—and while I knew I could trust her, it didn’t feel right. “I’m not wrong,” I replied. “She hasn’t touched her debit card or any of her credit cards. Her bank accounts haven’t been touched. Unless she was carrying a big wad of cash around with her—which I rather doubt—she’s just vanished. People don’t vanish without money—you know that as well as I do—and she left behind a check for fifty grand, which she could have just cashed.”
“Maybe she’s in protective custody.” Paige tried to pass the joint back to me but I waved her off. She pinched it out and placed it in the ashtray on the coffee table. “The Feds aren’t exactly going to give two shits about letting you know where she is—or Loren or the cops, for that matter.”
“Protective custody?” I stared at her. How stoned was I? I wondered. “Where on earth did you get that idea?”
“Ah, sit back and let me tell you some things you don’t know.” She gave me a sly glance. “After the storm—Luke Marino was approached by Social Justice—do you remember them?”
I did, vaguely.
After the levees failed and eighty percent of the city had been left homeless, a group called Social Justice had come to the city in late September and set up a campground in a park on the West Bank. They had a medical clinic, a food tent, and supplies—providing a place for people to stay when they came back to check on their houses, or to stay while they waited for FEMA trailers to be delivered while they worked on their homes. I had considered volunteering there myself when I heard about it—I saw a piece on CNN about it while I was evacuated in Dallas. The guy in charge was a large African American man with dreadlocks named Hakim Ali, and he spouted a lot of anti-government, anti-Republican rhetoric during the course of the interview.
“Did you know that in the early spri
ng of 2006, when Luke Marino was struggling to rebuild with no help whatsoever from his insurance company, he contracted Social Justice to run Cypress Garden?”
I shook my head. “I still don’t see the connection.”
Paige rolled her eyes. “Some things never change. You really need to start reading the newspaper.” She opened her massive purse and pulled out a folder, which she put on the coffee table. “Hakim Ali didn’t found Social Justice on his own, or run it. He was the face of the group, but he was partnered up with a white guy—Alex Davis. Is any of this ringing a bell?”
Paige always lectured me on my refusal to be up on the news. “Not a bit.”
“Alex Davis turned out to be an FBI agent, working undercover to get evidence on Hakim Ali for the federal prosecutor.” She laughed. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about any of this. Seriously, Chanse. Anyway, Alex disappeared without a trace in late 2006. Still nothing?”
There was something there in the dustiest corners of my memory. “I remember vaguely hearing about a Fed snitch vanishing.”
She nodded. “That’s when the story broke—when Alex Davis disappeared. About a week later, when he hadn’t checked in, the FBI came looking for him and the story broke. It was a big deal—Hakim claimed it was all a government conspiracy because he criticized Bush and FEMA publicly, and because he was black, it was all racist, blah blah blah.”
“They never found Alex Davis, did they?” It was starting to come back to me slowly. “And they never were able to prove Hakim or Social Justice had anything to do with him disappearing.”
“Sound familiar?” She winked at me. “Hakim is a witness in the Marino case, you might be interested to know—a witness for Global Insurance.”
“Seriously?” I couldn’t help myself—I started laughing. “Mr. Power-to-the-people-corporations-are-evil-and-destroying-the-planet is siding with an insurance company? What a fucking hypocrite.”